Abrupt change.

The abrupt change was in the weather.  We walked inside the museum and it was sunny and warm, we were in shorts and singlets.  We walked out of the museum and it had clouded over and was freezing cold.  I had at least remembered my jacket, poor Soph had forgotten hers.  So we abandoned out evening plans and high tailed it back to the hostel to warm clothing.  Hopefully we can still do the things we wanted to tomorrow, theres a gallery we should be able to fit in, and we can just switch our dinner plans.  It would be rather more annyoing if the weather change caused us to miss out on things we wanted to do.

We did get through a bit today though.  Firstly we found the German equivalent of the warehouse just around the corner from our hostel, which was great because I was desperately in need of a wallet - having left mine safely at home and having ended up using my camera bag for the last couple of weeks - and Soph needed some more socks and some jandals - she left hers at the last hostel.  Having gotten that, and chocolate, sorted,  (I've bought a big block of this German chocolate I love and am going to shove it in the bottom of my bag and hopefully get it home.  Fingers crossed...)  we headed off for the East side gallery.  It's the longest section of the wall still standing, and its covered in artwork.  It's pretty amazing, I think I took 70 photos.  That landed us perfectly by the river for lunch.  We seem to keep ending up in good lunch spots which is fantastic. 

A wee shimmy up to Hackescher market (I'm sick of saying 'and then') brought us to a fancy shopping district in search of an art deco jewellry store I found a card for, to have a look mainly, and perhaps find something cheapish.  When we eventually got to the shop there wasn't anything cheapish but it was very pretty.  I say eventually because we got distracted by another shop on our way.  There we were just meandering along the street lookig for number seven when our heads got turned by a shop window.  It was full of wooden toys/decorations.  Gasping with delight we found the door.  It was a dangerous shop.  The items weren't cheap but man were they gorgeous.  I could have blown all my remaining money there I think.  I didn't, but it was a struggle.

Leaving the jewellry store we saw a seat in a little courtyard and decided to grab it and eat while we had the chance.  Turns out we were in the Hackesche Hofe courtyards, a tourist attraction, something we were only alerted to when large groups of tourists started passing us by.  Thats really something to love about these cities, you can stumble upon amazing places by accident, and enjoy them for reasons other than that they're a marked on the map tourist attraction.

The rest of the afternoon we spent at the Pergamonmuseum, which my friend Eugen recommended as his favourite museum.  It was a great museum, full of Roman, Greek, Turkish and Babylonian architecture and artifacts.  Something I don't think we'll run into much further east.  We flashed through the Islamic stuff though unfortunately, being fairly tired and thirsty by that point.  It was when we left there that we got hit by the cold, and by the offended stares at our bare limbs.

So tonight we'll eat locally, theres a couple of decent looking restaurants near by, and I plan to try my first German beer (well possibly second, I don't actually know what kind of beer I was drinking in Maastricht).